Culture of violence can be curbed by adults boycotting violent media

When I was a first grader, and even until I was in fourth grade, I had a superhero.  He was the Lone Ranger.  It was not only that he had a wise Native American sidekick, or that he rode a beautiful white horse , but that in the days before TV, radio let me imagine what he looked like without the visualization of what happened.  In my later years, I realized what an influence he was in developing my own set of ethics.  He rode around Texas doing good; the only weapon he used was a six shooter  and his calling card was a silver bullet .  He planted two other lessons in my young brain:  1) individuals acting alone can also do powerfully good things; 2) the heroes are those who do not take credit for their good deeds . (“Who was that masked man” was another iconic phrase the emerged from radio series.)    This was the Wild West I loved.  A reader of my blog  from  Europe asked when the US would stop being the Wild West…but there are two sides of the wild west in a lawless community: the Lone Ranger and Jesse James  who killed to  commit crimes.  I understand there is another  superhero movie in the works: the hero is the Lone Ranger.  I hope the newest version does not lose sight of the original spirit of that old radio series and that the violence, what little of it there was, is not made into gory visuals.

In order to keep up with the  times of   “Now”, I have gone to recent movies featuring the remake of other heroes…from Spiderman to Superman,  who also were popular in the days of radio and comic books. They  too hide behind costumes that keep them anonymous,  but their methods of saving humanity are violent and bloody.  I have stopped  making conscious body counts  and convinced myself the carnage was fantasy and it was only a movie so  I could still sit back and enjoy the adrenaline rush the fast action brought.  The heroes, most of them, are still saving the damsel in distress or society from an ogre, but after a few minutes the shock of the  bloodshed so graphically displayed  turns to numbness. . 

I have peered over the shoulder of my grandson, an ace player of international standing of on line video  games. His are set in fantasy of medieval times  using weapons of that era.  But there are other games that arm the player with deadly modern weapons of war to kill.  My understanding is that the military uses games like these to desensitized troops, making it easier for them to take lives in combat.   We are conditioning our youths to do likewise and those who already have psychological problems can act them out.

We are seeing the fruits of our media. Controlling  this is indeed a problem  in our land of protection of the first amendment.  We can offer alternative programs such as those geared for the young on PBS and we can provide a parental guidance rating system, but it is  not enough.  The quandary becomes who can do more and who should do more.  Changing the media culture is not a silver bullet, but it can help. Availability of weapons and access to mental health are also parts  of the solution.  Government censorship is an anathema to our democratic society so the burden falls on those who produce modern media and their willingness to forgo the profits that violent films, video games and TV bring  them.  But the burden falls ultimately on adults  to take away their profits by not spending money on them for their own pleasure  and/or firmly monitoring and governing what media  their children are seeing and playing .